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I love some SimCity, I have played every version with countless hours. (Except Societies, for obvious reasons.) So, naturally, I was ecstatic when the announcement came about the new SimCity game. But it seems like every time they announce something, I am less enthusiastic about the release.

Announcing DLC before the game even had a demo video of gameplay, let alone a DLC that has been in every version of SimCity for free. The announcement of "Limited Edition" meaning that it's not the full game, for $60 even, made no sense to me.

The DRM, for obvious reasons. I was ok with the idea of going online for it, but that there is no single player is very disheartening. I loved the mixing of cities in SimCity4, and enjoyed bringing them together on my own. Now, I have to do it with real people, that I don't know at all.

The devs cherry picking the questions in the AMA, has gotten me to the point where I feel like if there is any issues with the game, we will be ignored to get them fixed. Having an issue with graphics or the "DLC" you bought? Tough luck, you are the only person experiencing this problem, and we aren't fixing it. (Even though the forum will be loaded with people having the same issue.)

So in the end, I won't be purchasing SimCity. But I am curious if someone is planning on it, and what is it about the game you just can't pass up?

TL;DR - Read the title.

Edit: I'm asking for people to convince a long time player to get the game. I am disheartened with each update for the game. So I am asking, what makes you want to get the game?

Edit 2: For those of you who are telling people to get past the DRM. EA IS GOING TO SHUT DOWN THE SERVERS! Someday, when they make SimCity 2 or 3 even, they will shut it down like they do with the sports games (as an example). Now think about how long you've been playing SimCity 4.. it's been out for 10 years. Still want to play this SC? Also, how many awesome mods have you used in SC4? They won't be available with having to connect to EA's servers. Why? Look at the type of mods you get with MMO's. They change the interface, but that's about it. No custom skins, added content... those won't be allowed on EA's servers. Now what do you think about their DRM? (It's not "I won't be online all the time!")

It turns out that "Limited Edition" is actually a premium term. It originally referred to limited availability of printing press material. This type of printed product had special features that made it more difficult and time-consuming to put together. Of course, it doesn't make much sense in the world of digital media, but there you go.

Edit: But to answer your question, I won't be buying it. Not at $60 and with always-on DRM marketed to us as a feature. I also can't stomach the inevitable slew of $40 expansion packs.

I'm glad someone pointed this out, and I wonder if the OP's interpretation of "Limited edition" is a common one. I've never known it to mean that it's less than the "full version" or an incomplete product.

Not buying it, for the simple reason that it does not allow you to load/save during game-play but only at the start/end of it, making "what if/what would happen" scenarios all but impossible to do, which was the main selling point for me.

Eg. you can't place a nuclear reactor see how that turns out then go back to a previous save to see what would happen if you went green.

I don't know why in the bullfighting fuck anyone thought removing in-game saves was a good idea. An "ironman" mode where you can't save would be good, but most people do not play the game like that. It's a gross misunderstanding of the entire SimCity fanbase as well as what made the games fun in the first place.

Most likely a consequence of their 'multiplayer-only' design. Allowing players to blow up a nuclear reactor then reverting to a previous save would play merry havoc with other player cities detecting massive radioactive fallout then suddenly...nothing. You would be completely unable to rely on the trends of your neighbouring cities if everything could be wiped out simply because those players reloaded an older save.

The biggest thing that put me off hasn't even really been mentioned yet, and that is mods. Sim City 4 has kept me interested over so many years largely due to the mod community it has that is constantly expanding and improving the mod, even to this day. Instead, we get to pay $20 for some new skins and full price again in a year or two for gameplay additions.

This really annoys me about modern games. The chance to make a quick buck with DLC has pretty much ruined modding for a lot of titles. I won't be buying Sim City if it doesn't have mods. That's what turned Sim City 4 from alright to amazing for me.

I won't be. Half the reason is that always online aspect. But the other half is just that it doesn't look like what I want from a Simcity game. The scale looks somewhere between Simcity and Societies. The cities should be getting bigger with our technology today, not smaller. Seems like Simcity has shrunk in every iteration since 2000.

Yeah I'm pretty meh about the DRM (annoying I can't play it anywhere but home but not a dealbreaker), however I'm not sure how one makes a SimCity game without subways, terraforming, or the ability to destroy one's own sandcastles without consequence.

Frankly that last one was the deal-breaker for me. Most of my favorite SimCity moments over the last 15 years have involved laying waste to my own creations in the most ridiculous ways I can think of, knowing I can jump back to it in all its not-completely-destroyed glory whenever I felt like it. Smaller cities, annoying as fuck DRM, reliance on EA's servers I can live with, but a SimCity game that makes destroying your cities permanent is no SimCity game I want to have.

But the Glassbox engine (or whatever they call it) is supposed to actually have each person be individually simulated. Each person and car you see on the streets actually corresponds with an individual agent. To me this reflects an improvement with today's technology.

CitiesXL is a processor hog, problem is... it only utilizes one core on multi-core CPUs (6x2.8ghz means you're running 1x2.8ghz). I could overlook the rest of the game's shortcomings, but this I could not forgive.

I for one would rather have massive cities with some abstraction than small ones where every person is simulated. It seems pretty obvious that the new SC is aimed at a casual mainstream audience. I'm sure it makes sense from a financial perspective, but it also means I won't be buying it.

The simulation engine is deeper -- instead of just randomly assigning jobs based on wealth, they've demoed the engine actually generating products and consuming then, and then using the demand for the output to drive employment demands, and so on.

This is the flip side whenever people complain that publishers focus on graphics too much. People will say all the time that they don't care about the superficial stuff and that developers should spend more time on background things like AI.

Then as soon as a developer tries doing something more advanced and completely innovative and it turns out that it takes up resources, people will look straight to the surface aspects first. Consumers like the idea of under the hood improvements, but as soon as it removes another aspect they enjoy, they'll be the first to complain that it doesn't look as good or isn't as big.

True, but it's been a very long time since SimCity 4 - people expect the AI in addition to cities at least the same size, not a reduction.

I won't be buying it because of the DRM, Social aspects, and honestly, the lack of terraforming. I loved creating environments in 4. The size issues doesn't bother me, but I understand why it would others.

But people aren't complaining about the graphics here, they're concerned about the smaller scale. To a lot of us, the large scale simulation was the primary appeal of the games. It's one thing to improve the AI and simulation engine, but they're moving from a statistical scale down to the scale of individual actors which, frankly, just seems to make it a different sort of game entirely.

To me its called SIMCITY, not CITY OF SIMs [sims being reference to the "agents"], this is something IMO EA/Maxis has been led off the track with. Whilst it is undoubtedly an improvement i think its going off the track like societies did. This one looks like its going to come out as mutant between societies, the sims and something like settlers. Whilst it may form a basis for a type of city management its not the village/town/city/metropolis builder Simcity was known for in the past.

Don't the people make up a part of the city though? You can't have a function city without people in the same way you can't have a functioning body without blood. If you take the blood away, yeah, there's still a body, but the blood is a vital part of what makes it work.

No I won't. I've never boycotted a game due to DRM before and this isn't because of DRM.

It's because the game doesn't run locally. I still play SC4 and occasionally SC3000 and given EA's habit of shutting down servers I don't think anyone here will be playing SC5 a decade after release.

I'm also saddened by the fact that many people will be buying it because this means more companies will be going this route and my preferred style of gaming is dying. Unfortunate but I will not hold it against anyone.

I'm not beneath picking it up on a sale. 2 years from now. But no way in hell I'm giving them money at launch.

It's a shame, really. The Glass Box engine looks interesting. And it's still Sim fucking City! They just went into all kinds of weird directions with online shit and seem to severely cut content (no underground system, no landscaping, no manual saves, smaller max city size…) for many of the things I've actually been waiting to see more of since Sim City 4. Especially the fragmenting in lots of smaller cities again is disappointing. I had hoped we get to do bigger, near unlimited size cities, instead they got smaller. :(

I'll buy it if it gets good reviews, and if it looks fun. DRM isn't going to stop me. So the deciding factors for me will be reviews, playing it (if friends have it or if there's a demo), and feedback from the community that doesn't include complaints about DRM - I'm willing to look past that for my favorite game series.

I believe most people's complaints wasn't the fact that there's DRM - it's the fact that the game relies on EA's servers. Which means if EA somehow goes down, that means you can't play your copy of SimCity anymore.

For me with the DRM the concern about it going down isn't a big concern because I accept that as a possibility. With that said my concern that EA can and most likely turn it into a Madden type system. Where 2 years down the line you'll see a new version, and EA naturally decides to shut down the servers for the past City version to make room for the new one.

I guarantee if they come out with a sequel to this SimCity in 2-3 years, it will not be long before the servers for this one disappear. This is EA, if there's no obvious financial incentive to do something, they won't do it, and customers be damned.

That's somewhat of a concern, but I mean that's the case for a lot of games these days, no? Not that it's a good thing, but I can thing of a tremendous number of games that have that set up - many of which I own. I'll take my chances if the game gets otherwise positive reviews.

Diablo is the only major title that I know of that does this. Others have login servers, which they can disable when it hits the end of it's lifespan, but this new SimCity does calculations on the servers. Once it's gone, it is completely gone.

From what they said, it's not that it couldn't have been done without the server side stuff, it's that they designed it from the ground up to be multi-player, so they built it so that the server would handle all the inter-city interactions rather than the client.

If you have hate for this game, the design doc is probably where you start. They made a call that the online stuff was going to be a big draw. Clearly for many of the fans of the series this isn't the case. We'll see how they do sales wise though.

That's somewhat of a concern, but I mean that's the case for a lot of games these days, no?

Um, no, it isn't. Very few singleplayer games and singleplayer parts of games require a constant online connection in order to play and save your game (no local saves in the new sim city game, its all to the cloud).

I am on the margins with it, on the one hand I would love to play it, on the other most of the "innovations" seem like things in cities XL 2012 just with a slightly better engine. Honestly, origin is the deciding factor. If it comes to steam (I know not at release) I will probably pick it up, but if it is origin exclusive I think I will have to pass.

It will be available for sale on other websites, but the game requires Origin to be running while you play it because it is constantly connected to EA's servers for various things like world economic data and all of your saves go into the cloud (no local saving it seems).

I will do what every normal gamer does: Evaluate the game based on reviewers I trust and if it seems decent, I will buy it. With our without DRM, with our without Pre-orer DLC, if its a good game and worth the 59.99 sticker price, I will happily spend the money for an equal amount of entertainment.

Nah, this one is different I think. I would definitely be buying this on launch day if it wasn't for the DRM, tiny cities, and forced multiplayer bullshit. I'm gonna pass and just wait for a proper city sim to come out while I play Sim City 4 that I got for $5 during the steam sale.

I will definitely be buying the game, city-building games is one of my favourite type of games. I don't really care about the complaints because they don't affect me. I have perfect connection, I don't often buy DLC, I don't care about the politics of the devs/publishers, all I want is my game.

Same here. I can appreciate the frustration that a lot of reddit users are feeling with the DRM/EA stuff, but that's not going to stop me from buying it on day 1. I love Sim City and have been waiting for 10 years for a new one.

Fair enough :) I know the risks. I'm confident that I'll have an enjoyable experience, but I'm also confident there might be a few connection issues/bugs. It's not enough to deter me from playing, however.

Same here. The simulation engine looks amazing and I'm not going to blame Maxis for decisions the CEO of EA makes. Just like with previous versions of SC this one will mature and grow into it's full potential.

I love Anno 2070, but it also has a lot of un-needed DLC and constant on DRM. If you aren't connected to uPlay, you loose some of the missions and the ability to carry your (limited) inventory to a new game.

They had it setup so that you only ever got 3 activations, but they changed that after players complained.

I knew what I was getting when I bought it, but it is a constant low level annoyance, especially with my unstable internet connection.

I like the idea of having neighboring cities to buy and sell things to. It would let me finally specialize in things like a "farmland" city or a "high tech" city without having to make a completely self-sufficient region.

I think the MP aspect makes it far more interesting, and if the economy is done properly, it could be really fun.

But not at $60 (have zero interest in cosmetic DLC). My days of paying $60 for games are over.

Its really just multiplayer *gamemode by yourself. All it lets you do to play SP is create a private region where you can choose whether or not to invite friends into, but its still exactly the same as a multiplayer region otherwise and has the same online requirements.

Not gonna buy it because Diablo 3 had burned me rather badly due to its always online system. Game companies need to realise that not everyone has great internet connection with 99% uptime without any issues. Sim City will probably have the same issues that i had with Diablo 3, mainly laggy gameplay if the connection is slowed down.

I guess Anno will be my new city building series to follow, even though Anno 2070 isnt exactly a full featured offline friendly game.

But I strongly suspect I'll derive what I consider to be $60 worth of enjoyment for it, and as such it's totally worth buying in my book. Will I be inconvenienced by the always on DRM or whatever? Yeah, maybe, who knows. But I still think I'll get 60 dollars worth of joy from it, and that's more than enough reason for me to buy it.

I've already prepurchased it. No, it's not the same as previous SimCity titles. If I wanted the same thing again, I'd go play the old ones.

I'm happy with a lot of the changes and I look forward to creating a region with an online friend of mine. I think it'll be interesting. In fact, I'm thinking about several regions, where we deal out the pieces differently... Maybe 1 region I'll take the north half and he'll have the south. Maybe in another we'll alternate so that every piece is next to a piece of the other person's.

I also think the altered way of upgrading and stuff is neat.

Does the DRM suck? Yeah. Hate that. But then, I only plan to play it online, so online-only DRM is basically what I signed up for, same as an MMO.

To all those voting with your wallets over your ethics, I applaud you. I absolutely think one should stand up for what they believe in.

Unless you pirate it. If you pirate it, you've failed to make your point. You have to take the high road to get heard.

Unless you pirate it. If you pirate it, you've failed to make your point.

How so? The point is I refuse to give EA money as long as they're holding what I plan on playing as a singleplayer game hostage to however long they plan on keeping their servers running. They're not getting any of my money regardless of whether I choose to play SimCity.

(based on information thus far, I'm not planning on playing it, just talking about the implications of "making my point" here)

If you don't buy it and go without, you've given up a luxury good to prove a point and (if you tell them!) they'll know they lost a sale because of their mistakes.

If you pirate it, you don't give up anything and you get to keep your money. Even if you tell them you pirated it because of their mistakes, they aren't going to believe you. You gained too much by the piracy. But nobody is going to write to them and tell them they pirated the game. It's illegal, and that would be proof they'd use in court.

You're sending the message that you do want this content and would probably have paid for it if only they could come up with a more secure form of DRM. You're pushing them to do the exact opposite of what you want to happen.

You're not making any point other than being greedy. You obviously WANT the game otherwise you'd not pirate it. If you disagreed with their views so much that you weren't even willing to play the game then the "protest" would have some merit as they're losing customers, as it stands all you're doing is proving that the people don't care about their decisions and that they need better DRM to combat pirates so more of them buy the game.

If you really want to send a message, buy it on a deep discount. This proves that you have some interest in the game but would not in it's current state pay full release price for it. Pirating it to prove a point isn't the way.

This is the thing that worries me. I stay away from buying Madden and Tiger Woods because of this. Shutting down servers because they are older. I want so badly to play older sports games online with friends in other states. But I can't, because they shut it down.

It'll get great reviews, you'll buy it on day 2 based on them, and then next thing you know 2 weeks later everyone will realize how shallow the experience actually is, but it will be too late. Same story as so many major releases these days. Amazing first impressions followed by zero depth.

Of course. That is all of it. Video game reviews can't be rushed like movie reviews, because games are far, far longer. They also tend to have a bit more of a lasting effect than movies because of the actual engagement you have with the product; I often haven't fully realized how much I loved or hated a game until weeks after I've finished it. A good game will keep you thinking about it, have you wanting to come back for a second playthrough shortly after finishing your first, have you reading about it even when you aren't playing it. A bad game does none of those things; in fact, after I finish a bad game, I start thinking about all the ways in which it was flawed, and everything that could have been done so much better, and these are games I may have been enjoying while I was playing them.

Game reviewers don't get any of this opportunity. They have a few days to play as much of a game as they can and rush the review out the door. And they know that if they write something too controversial the fanboys will ruin them—so if a big, heavily advertised game like Assassin's Creed 3 is coming out, you simply can't give it anything lower than a 70 at a minimum for fear of repercussions. It's a lose-lose situation.

I do not like some of the design decisions, always online is stupid and I do not want any of the features it involves, the server-side calculations serve no purpose and are unnecessary (especially considering the processing strength of even a low end modern PC), and in general it does not look to have the same feel as sim city 2000, 3000, or sim city 4.

I don't have a problem with the connected elements. I just don't want them to be an excuse for dumbing down individual cities. If it turns out a city has just as big a scale as one from SimCity 4, then fine.

However, I'm already losing hope because you can't seem to choose how cities connect. In 4, you could have huge regions look like one continuous city. It doesn't look like you can do that here.

If they don't fix this, I probably won't buy it.

I'm older now than when SimCity 4 came out. I expect the game to be much more complex, not less. And not different.

I was extremely excited about it when it was first announced and I get progressively more disappointed with what they're doing every time they release more details.

At this point I am 100% certain I won't be purchasing it on launch. More than that, I will be waiting quite a while for reviews and to see how EA approaches additional content. I won't be purchasing it at all if it seems to follow the route of The Sims with countless expansions that will, to me, make the base game seem like it isn't a full product. I can live without the small DLC that doesn't add too much to the game. Of course, I don't trust EA to not milk the franchise for all it's worth. The fact they aren't including a lot of the features from the previous games, including basic things like subways, at launch only goes to show they may even be withholding things in order to charge additionally for them later. Sorry, but I can't afford that shit.

However my connection is pretty terrible. If there's always online DRM then there's no point in me getting it. I'm getting a gaming computer (my first) in a few days so I don't really know what normally happens.

Anyway, is there any way of getting a hacked version or a mod of some kind that can remove the DRM and make it so that if my connection doesn't drop out then I can still play?

tl;dr I'm new to PC gaming, have a bad connection, will there be a mod or something to remove the always online DRM?

I was planning on buying it. I love the Sim series. However, once I found out that it was going to be server based always on (think world of warcraft or whatever mmo you like) where lag, server issue, and patch days would be part of my experience it was an immediate turn off.

I saw what it did to Diablo 3 and it's something I refuse to be a part of.

No. I might have picked it up on a whim at some point when I got the sudden urge to build some shit, but I really don't want to deal with always on DRM considering how annoying it was in D3, esp with my connection being as shit as it is.

For the people here claiming they aren't buying the new Simcity their will be 10 others replacing them who see the game (I hate using the term casual) and think 'ooo! that looks fun!'
Whereas ten years ago they will have picked up SC4 and thought 'Christ on a bike, what sad person wants to manage a city like that? It looks far too complicated'.

The idealist in me says no, but honestly, I'm not sure. I like the looks of it, but judging on what I've seen so far, SC4 looks like a better game to me, so I'll be waiting for reviews. Definitely won't be buying it on release, but a month or three after that, we'll see.

Hypothetically, If the two were being released side by side, I think I'd be more excited with the scale of SC4 than with the depth of Simcity.

Announcing DLC before the game even had a demo video of gameplay, let alone a DLC that has been in every version of SimCity for free.

Which DLC is this, by any chance? Because MaxisMan and all those European city skins were certainly not in previous iterations of SimCity.

Edit: Apparently they had these sorts of European skins back for SimCity 2000.

The announcement of "Limited Edition" meaning that it's not the full game, for $60 even, made no sense to me.

They are petty, aesthetic skins and a little superhero/supervillain addition. There is also a little park addition that has the Sims diamond over top. It's meaningless.

The devs cherry picking the questions in the AMA, has gotten me to the point where I feel like if there is any issues with the game, we will be ignored to get them fixed.

They never cherry picked. What AMA were you reading? They answered the DRM question honestly. Just because they didn't answer the Same question four hundred times doesn't mean they cherry picked.

People asked how long a disconnect would take for them to be booted off the game. They answered.

The DRM, for obvious reasons. I was ok with the idea of going online for it, but that there is no single player is very disheartening. I loved the mixing of cities in SimCity4, and enjoyed bringing them together on my own. Now, I have to do it with real people, that I don't know at all.

This is blatantly incorrect. You can play entirely by yourself, with no friends in your region whatsoever. Where are you getting this false information?

Wow. I didn't even know there was a new Sim City being made so your title made me really excited, but then I read your post. WTF. Already pushing DLC, and forced online? Yeah, I think I'll pass. Let this entry die a quick death I say. (It doesn't even sound worth pirating.)

I am extremely disappointed about the removal of features like manual saving, terraforming, underground systems and a proper offline singleplayer so no I won't be buying this game even if it goes on sale for cheap. I try to only support games that either advance their design and/or do a really great job (in case of story based games).

A single-player game should never require you to be online. Dark/Demon's Souls and Dragon's Dogma were single-player games that had somewhat important online functionality, but were entirely playable without it.

To be honest, it looks to me like they started with a DRM scheme and a popular series, and built a game to fit it.

I'll buy it, just because I recently installed SC4 again and got totally addicted. I'm very interested to know how the new one plays. i totally understand why people are upset about the game and won't be buying it though. They have really gone out of their way to make the game unappealing.

I'll wait for some reviews from people who played all of them before and see if it's worth it. I'll buy it if I read good things or watch some interesting gameplay videos. They have a great opprotunity to do something amazing with the series and I don't want to miss out if it turns out to be good. I can overlook DLC and DRM (I used Origin to try out BF3 and Spore when I got it for free) if the game is decent.

If it's good and receives a good community response then I'll buy it. The thing that scares me not really the 'always on' part but that so much of the game is tied up with these servers that EA has a tendency (no, seemingly a rule) about shutting down only a few years after launch.

If such a thing would happen, I'd be left with a crippled game...so we'll see.

I'd love to buy it though -- I've bought every simcity game so far (Except societies.)

I'm probably going to be waiting for about 6 months past release. I'm leaning towards buying it but the map size and the general simplification has me put off a bit. I liked planning water ways and electricity paths, but now it's all based on roads. It also seems very easy. In 2000 you could easily create a town which nobody wanted to live in if you didn't plan it correctly. Seems that isn't much of a problem here.

I won't be. The main reason is that my computer would not run it well. But another BIG reason is that EA is pushing it to only Orgin. Instead of just trying to get money by making your own game platform, make a game platform that is actually GOOD.

I loved the hell out of Sim City 4, it's a tough decision but I won't be preordering it. I'll wait at least until it comes out and watch the reviews and other info. I'll probably will pirate it to see if it plays smoothly on my computer, if it does play well and its DRM isn't that annoying I'll buy it.

I like Sim games and thus I'll want to try it despite it's always online bs. I'm just a fan of the series and I'm excited to play it. Being Origin only doesn't really matter to me because it hasn't hindered my BF3 playing, so I'm OK with it.

I'll probably buy it. The deciding factor is I want to play the new sim city. I don't care about having to play online. I may not buy it at release, but that's just because I want to avoid another D3 (e.g. a game I pay 60 bucks for that has hardly any replay value).

I kind of want to pick it up. Visually, I like the way it looks and it's added some features that look kind of nice to me. I'm not a fan of DRM and the save thing sound a bit disappointing but it's not a fatal blow for me. I'll see how it stacks up when it's finally released. In other words, I'm still on the fence.

I will probably pirate it to try it out around launch and possibly buy it when it is 20-30 (if it ends up being enjoyable despite its shortcomings).

The DRM is the primary factor in doing it like this... I really wouldn't care about it being "always on" and requiring an internet connection, buuuut... the launch will probably be messy as hell (a la Diablo 3), there will likely be a limit on the longevity of the game (when they turn off the servers, it will be no more), and the inability to play solo and save/ reload at will may kill the game for me.

The whole situation is quite unfortunate. I really wish they were thinking of this more as a product than a service that they can turn on and off at will.

This whole thread is a stereotypical fucking joke. I'll be buying it if it gets good to great reviews and goes on sale at some point. I don't give a shit about the DRM connect stuff, especially given that 90 percent of the games on Steam use DRM via your internet connection. And I don't want to hear "but there is offline mode and it works fi-," no. Offline mode is a fucking train wreck.

Personally, my problem with their DRM is more for not being able to play single player in a game that has been built around being single player. Also, at some point they will shut down the server, making it completely useless.

Except that even if starting Steam when offline bugs out and doesn't work for you, it won't kick you out of Steam or the game you are palying if you lose connection like online. Sim City saves your game automatically to the cloud instead of your hard drive so you cannot load saves and if you lose connection you have "a few minutes" to reconnect before getting kicked out of the game.

I have a rather different (and possibly weird) reason for not buying it: it seems to only allow for city planning following the Broadacre City concept, which to me equals 20th century suburban middle class dystopia. No thank you.